With Lilly’s Zepbound price cut and Novo’s impending senate hearing, Wegovy is in the hot seat
With Lilly’s Zepbound price cut and Novo’s impending senate hearing, Wegovy is in the hot seat
Just when you thought the weight loss drug space couldn’t get any more interesting, Eli Lilly shook up the red-hot obesity market on Tuesday, stating plans to begin selling single-dose vials of its blockbuster Zepbound (tirzepatide) directly to consumers.
The announcement comes on the heels of second-quarter earnings, which showed Lilly’s Zepbound is closing the gap with Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy in the race for weight-loss market share.
Analysts this week reacted positively to the move by Lilly to cut the price of Zepbound and offer it through a new self-pay pharmacy component of LillyDirect, the company’s direct-to-consumer platform which was launched in January. Truist Securities analyst Joon Lee contends there’s no reason why other branded GLP-1 manufacturers couldn’t pursue a similar strategy given the high demand from patients willing to pay out of pocket. Will Novo follow Lilly’s lead?
If Novo is going to make a big announcement on cutting Wegovy pricing, the company might want to take the opportunity to do so sometime over the next few weeks. CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen is scheduled to appear Sept. 24 before the Senate health committee to answer questions about, as stated in the name of the hearing, why the company is “charging Americans with diabetes and obesity outrageously high prices for Ozempic and Wegovy.”
